Net Vampire

Courtesy: Andre Malesh. Posted: Wednesday, Aug 25, 1999

This program is intended to replace the downloading feature in your browser. The advantage being that once a download is selected you can close the browser and save resources whilst working on something else. You also have more options to choose from. You can either start the download immediately or schedule it to start later. If there is more than one download you can run them in parallel or line them up one after the other.

Provided the site supports restarts you can even stop a ‘job’ in progress and continue it later on from where it left off. I have found this feature very useful when a thunderstorm pops up and I need to shut down NOW. Net Vampire will also detect any break in the link and automatically restore it. I love just having to drag a link over to the drop window and letting Vampire take over.

This program is not unique in what it does, there are others around. Some of these have more features to offer. However this is my favorite because it is incredibly good at coping with lousy connections. I was downloading a 200 mg. file from a very slow, very ‘noisy’ link in Kiev, the Ukraine. If I remember correctly the download took 18 hours and the link broke 9 times, but Vampire handled it perfectly and the file was ok. A torture test if ever there was one. The author of the file told me ‘use Vampire or you’ll never get it’. He should know, he’s the program’s author... Alex Shovkoplyas.